Why I don’t roll male characters in video games

In the distant past, I’m sure that I’ve written an essay or two defending and explaining why most all of my RPG and MMO characters tend to be female. But out of all of the reasons that I’ve listed in those articles, I don’t think I touched on one of the most important ones: I generally hate how male characters are portrayed in games. I’ve made an effort. From time to time, I try to push myself to roll up a male character for variety’s sake if nothing else. I convince myself that there’s nothing wrong with it and that it’ll be good for me to experience the game from the same gender that I am. But a couple of exceptions aside, it rarely sticks. I don’t end up bonding with the male toons the same way that I do with the females, and I grow increasingly cautious about doing that again because I don’t want to waste time or money investing into a character that I will either abandon or pay to change. What is it? Why are male characters so repugnant? Maybe “repugnant” is a really strong word here. I don’t recoil at them. But I don’t connect with them either. And when I think about it, it’s because video game designers don’t make guy character models that I can relate to. You see, when I play The Sims 4, I can make male characters that I kind of like. I had this one guy, Trap, who was… [Read full story]